Yes, they did it

[vdubrick]

Institute for New Materials (INM) in Saarbrucken, Germany developed a paint which is mar- and swirl-free. Woohoo !!



I remember RonK having mentioned something similar but he said he couldn`t give any further details on it at that time.



The paint is being developed by using the Sol Gel Process and nano-particles (Don`t ask me what this all about is, I was very bad at chemistry :) )



They tested the paint by using steel wool, finger nail etc. and the paint was absolutely swirl free.



The development will be completed in two years. A contract will be signed with one of the leading car manufacturers this sommer.



I`ll keep you updated as long as I have more info on this.



Source : Auto-Bild, Germany.



Deckard

[samiam513]

that can be good and bad....



Good - Swirl free



Bad - We people who dedtail for $$ just lost 1 service.

[imported_Intermezzo]

Well, I guess our cars will no longer stand out as much from the rest of the automotive hoi polloi. Also, I`d better get to work on finishing up all the polishes that I`ve stockpiled.

lol, u can do my car too! :D



just because the paint wont swirl doesnt mean it wont oxidize or dull either, so I don`t think all of our polishes will be worthless just yet.

[shaf]

Amazing. I wonder how it works and what these nano-particles are made of (buckyballs???:D). And does it just not show the light refracting effects of scratching/micro-marring, or is it just ultra-hard?



Maybe Popular Mechanics will cover it some day. :)

[vdubrick]

Here is a demo pic I got.



http://bilder.autobild.de/bilder/1/8115.jpg



They are using nanoparticles to develop anti-glare surfaces on the windows and dash.



http://bilder.autobild.de/bilder/1/8114.jpg



Pictures are courtesy of Autobild, Germany

[imported_Intel486]

Originally posted by samiam513

that can be good and bad....



Good - Swirl free



Bad - We people who dedtail for $$ just lost 1 service.



We didn`t lose one service, we lost two!



When this becomes popular, then we won`t have to polish paint anymore to get rid of scratches and swirls so that is out.



Also, since it is swirl, scratch resistant then people won`t fear taking their car through an automatic car wash!

[imported_doug]

very, very interesting. I wonder if these "particles" have "memory" like the "memory plastics" - you deform them but they return to their original shape. Maybe that is how it works?



Deckard - ofg course I hope this is for real, but to improve my comfort level - do you know anything about Institute for New Materials? Is it a legimitate org? I would hate to get my hopes up only to learn this was some "miracle cure marketing" like we`ve seen with so many products here in the U.S. "absolutely the shiniest finish - completely hides all swirls. resists all chemicals, acids, even fire......"



I remind everyone that "the california water blade absolutely doesn`t scratch" and "Z-5 is the first non-abrasive polish that will eliminate swirl marks, fine scratches and spidering, ..." (right from zaino`s web site.) Yeah, right.

[vdubrick]

@carguy



I personally have heard of this institute the very first time as I`ve read the article. However, I`ve made a small search and found their website. Maybe you may like to have a look at.



INM (http://www.inm-gmbh.de/inm-technologies.html)



Regards



Deckard

[admac]

it seems like it would be similar technology to the self-healing plastics that i saw a show about. essentially, there are small containers of the material embedded in the formula. when a scratch (or a crack as per the plastic) occurs, it breaks open one of the nano-balls of the material and it simple fills the space back in. considering a scratch is a fissure in the surface of the material, i can see how having little balloons of material fill that fissure could make sense.

[samiam513]

how would it know where the top of the crack is? It would just keep filling until it overflowed right? That wouldn`t be good for paint.

[imported_StyleTEG]

Just thinking outloud, but wouldn`t there be a point where the paint could no longer heal itself?



If something rubbed against the paint that scratched some of the paint off, it seams like there would be a limit of how much the paint could "regrow"?

[imported_doug]

Originally posted by Deckard

@carguy



I personally have heard of this institute the very first time as I`ve read the article. However, I`ve made a small search and found their website. Maybe you may like to have a look at.



INM (http://www.inm-gmbh.de/inm-technologies.html)



Regards



Deckard



Thanks, Deckard -



I spent a good deal of time looking over the web site. Very interesting, but very strange. On the one hand, it appears to be a decent sized company with a lot of space and 250 people - on the other hand the web site appears to have been last updated in 1997, and is unusual in that it provides so little information about the company. There is ONE GUY who is the contact - and he is the founder. So - it is still very, very intriguing, but it there`s just something about it that seems "weird" to me. I do know that Ph.D.-run scientific institutions are often like this - so again I`m not saying it can`t be - only that I`m still skeptical.



Also - the coatings mentioned are only a "few microns" thick. A micron is a millionth of an inch, or a millionth of a millimeter - I forget which - but either way, our paint thicknesses are measured in "mils" - thousandths of an inch. Said another way, a micron is 1000 times thinner than a mil. I wonder how much protection this can offer? How thick is the invisible contaminant that causes a swirl? Just thinking out loud here......

[Redcar GUY]

Originally posted by carguy





Also - the coatings mentioned are only a "few microns" thick. A micron is a millionth of an inch, or a millionth of a millimeter - I forget which - but either way, our paint thicknesses are measured in "mils" - thousandths of an inch. Said another way, a micron is 1000 times thinner than a mil. ......





micron



A micron (short for micrometer) is one-millionth of a meter. It can also be expressed as:

10-6 meter

One thousandth of a millimeter

One 25-thousandth of an inch

The micron is a unit of measure for the core in a optical fiber cable, for which the most common diameter is 62.5 microns. It is also used to measure the line width on a microchip. Intel`s Pentium 4 microprocessors are built using 0.18 or 0.13 line widths. AMD`s Athlon uses a 0.18 line width.



A human hair is said to be about 50 microns wide.







;)

[C. Charles Hahn]

My dad tested a human hair in a micrometer once (device used to measure with micron precision) and it came out at 52 microns. We were guessing the oils/etc. accounted for the extra 2 uM`s on the end. :up